Modern retail stores suffer from a number of issues that negatively affect consumer experience, and oftentimes, revenue as well. Many stores are forced to spend substantial expense on cashier labor or risk frustrating consumers with long checkout lines. Likewise, expense must also be spared to monitor in-store inventory and provide assistance for consumers looking to find, order, or return specific products. Additionally, theft of products from store shelves continues to be a significant problem for merchants. Existing store monitoring systems rely on various mirrors, cameras or even in-person monitoring of the store floors. These systems are often inadequate to cost-effectively safeguard store inventory.
Existing store security systems also rely on large security devices attached to certain products. These security devices typically rely on magnetic fields, which detect the tag as it passes through a detector located at the exit to a store. These tags must be removed by store personnel prior to exiting the store, which further adds to delays in the checkout process.
Many of these issues could be addressed with systems and methods that allow customers to quickly and easily locate, select, pay for, and remove products from a store. It would further be desirable to have system in place to efficiently monitor store inventory and track it as it progresses through the store, to detect and deter theft, without interfering with legitimate customers' ability to quickly purchase products. Thus, there is a need in the retail shopping field to create new and useful systems and methods for RFID-based retail management.